Reported by TechCrunch AI
Microsoft generated $10 billion in revenue from commercial arrangements with OpenAI, including revenue-sharing payments, in the quarter ended September 30, the company said in a regulatory filing on Wednesday. That represents nearly 11% of Microsoft’s total quarterly revenue of $92.3 billion, highlighting the enormous financial ties that remain between the two companies even as they increasingly compete for the same customers .
(Microsoft’s financial year begins in July, making the quarter ended September 30, 2026 the first quarter of its fiscal 2027.)
For the full 2026 fiscal year, revenue from OpenAI hit $24.1 billion. At its latest quarterly pace, Microsoft would pull in $40 billion annually from OpenAI-related arrangements.
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Microsoft also reported $7.2 billion in outstanding receivables from OpenAI at the end of September, up from $6 billion at the end of June. That money represents amounts OpenAI owes for previous transactions, not additional revenue.
It’s not clear how much of Microsoft’s revenue from OpenAI came from revenue-sharing payments or Azure cloud computing services. TechCrunch has reached out for more information. In November 2025, TechCrunch reported , citing leaked documents, that Microsoft had received $865.8 million in net revenue-sharing payments from OpenAI during the first nine months of that year.
OpenAI reportedly shares 20% of its revenue with Microsoft as part of a previous deal in which the software giant invested more than $13 billion in the AI startup. (Neither the AI lab nor Microsoft have publicly confirmed this percentage.) As part of an April 2026 agreement, OpenAI is on the hook to continue sharing revenue with Microsoft through 2030, subject to a cap, even as OpenAI is allowed to work with competing cloud providers.
The companies began loosening the ties of their once-exclusive partnership in October 2025, when Microsoft relinquished its hold on OpenAI to give the startup more freedom to partner with other cloud providers. In exchange, OpenAI committed to buying an additional $250 billion in Azure services as part of an October 2025 agreement.
Microsoft’s ownership stake in OpenAI has also declined slightly from about 25% in June to 24% in September. That continues a gradual decline…